Particularly when using electrical circuits in radiation-burdened environments, for example in space at the edge of the earth's atmosphere, or outside of the atmosphere in a vacuum, interference effects caused by radiation can occur in electronic components, so that as the result of such interference in the individual electronic components, the method of operation of an electrical circuits as a whole is disrupted.
A typical mechanism for eliminating such interference in digital circuits is redundancy on the basis of a majority decision. In this connection, multiple functional blocks of the same type are used to perform a function, and the respective output signals of these functional blocks are passed to a majority decision, i.e., the specific output signal that was output by most of the functional blocks is selected from the output signals of the functional blocks, which deviate from one another, if applicable, for further processing.
In the case of analog circuits, such a mechanism is not possible, because value-continuous signals are being processed. A majority decision is therefore practically impossible, because due to the value-continuous signals, even the slightest deviations between two output signals do not permit a majority decision.
Known approaches for reducing radiation-related interference effects in analog circuits involve forming an average value from the output signals of multiple redundant functional blocks or that of selecting an average value from the sorted amount of all of the output signals.
US 2007/0109012 A1 describes a circuit structure for reducing interference effects in redundant functional blocks, using comparators and sorting.